Bumblebee

So, “Bumblebee” was directed by Travis Knight and stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jorge Lendeborg Jr. and John Cena. This movie is a prequel to Michael Bay’s Transformers series and follows the Autobot named Bumblebee. The story starts from a war between the Autobots and Decepticons in the Cybertron. The Autobots decides to regroup later for reinforcement and then “Optimus prime” sends bumblebee to earth. Now bumblebee comes to earth meets Hailee and the story gradually progress. So bumblebee is a new fresh vision to the franchise. This is a really fun movie. The set up is really good. Screenplay by Christine Hudson is very amazing. Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie Watson is extremely great in the movie. She tries to connect with someone after losing her father. Her character really added an emotional value to the movie. Jorge Lendeborg Jr.’s character is enjoyable. The action sequences were also very well done. Some fight scenes were so great that you kind of get to the edge of your seat. John Cena who plays the role of a military cop is also good in his performance. Soundtrack is preferably good. Anyway this movie puts a smile on every transformers fan and is definitely the best example of what this franchise is meant to be. Fact: did you know that the voice of bumblebee was given by the famous American actor Dylan O’Brien.

If you liked Michael Bay's Transformers series and could forgive Mr. Bay's lapses in storytelling, like the fact that he made a very good first movie and then contradicted the canon source material and his own movies with every sequel afterword just for the sake of bigger and better explosions; don't buy this movie. Don't even rent it, you won't like it. The BumbleBee Movie dials things back to before the events of the first movie and includes such original source material that there is no way anyone who's seen just one of the classic 1980's cartoon could fail to recognize over 80% of the characters absolutely instantly. The people forking out the money for the tickets and DVD's are the ones who grew up on this stuff and THIS is what we want to see. This movie was brilliantly done in such a way that it could have either been a prequel to the Michael Bay movies, or the first edition of a reboot movie. Since then I've read articles that say such things as "Hasbro has concluded that this movie takes us where we want to go and that they've decided BumbleBee is to be a movie series reboot". I completely agree and hope it's not unsubstantiated rumor.

80% great, 20% terrible (mostly John Cena). The problem is that even if you have a great coffee a small speck of poop in it will ruin the entire drink; and yes I'm comparing John Cena to poop, the guy can't act and they gave him terrible lines in this movie. Hailee Steinfeld and Jorge Lendeborg Jr. did a commendable job, the effects were great and for the most part the story was well done. Being old enough to have owned original Transformer toys I do struggle with many of these established franchises being written with female leads just for the sake of giving more roles to women; in this case Hailee does a great job and her role felt natural but this is not the case for the Transformer called Shatter whose character feels forced and just super nasty to prove women can be bad too. However in the end it really was John Cena and his lines, very poorly written and executed, that left me with a bad taste. The 80% great is worth watching if you can do it for free.